


Needs

by redfiona



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett version)
Genre: Community: lgbtfest, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redfiona/pseuds/redfiona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are no interesting cases, and Watson has locked away his needles and cocaine.  While Holmes is satisfied with chemistry journals, must it always be thus?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needs

**Author's Note:**

> Originally conceived for the 2008 edition of the lgbtfest. Unfortunately, it takes me an age to write anything. Written for the prompt:Sherlock Holmes - Holmes - Holmes's inability to fit in with Victorian morality extends further than the seven percent solution.

Although it was the early hours of the morning, a frustrated Holmes still walked towards the Diogenes Club. Being as it was an eminently sensible institution, the only one in London, it had long since accepted that its members were occasionally prone to insomnia, or in Holmes's case, fits of the most abject boredom, and might require its services at any time. All it took was one rap on the door and he was granted entry.

Holmes went immediately to the reading room, where he hoped to find the most recent Chemische Berichte. Copper chemistry might not be the answer to the world's ills but it would keep his interest for a couple of hours. More than that he could not ask.

The criminals of London had done worse than turn honest, they'd turned dull, there was nothing there for him to enjoy. The good doctor had locked away his needles and the seven percent solution after his collapse the previous month. Watson had attributed it to over-stimulation. Of course, Sherlock could pick the lock, but it was the principle of the thing. He had told Watson that he didn't need the cocaine, and was determined to prove himself right.

At home, he had even updated his own newspaper indices. That meant he had truly run out things to do in Baker Street.

He was bored.

There was one obvious way to relieve his frustration.

While Watson's description of his dislike of love and all the attendant nonsense was utterly correct, even beyond its understandable limitations, were he to indulge in such fripperies, Irene Adler is the epitome of the sex to which he would not address his affections.

As a rich man he could afford to avoid those unfortunates who had to sell themselves in Soho, and yet, it didn't leave him many further options. Yes, there were various gentlemen's clubs on the Euston Road, but he'd helped enough of their members to avoid blackmail and scandal to know that was no way for him. It was not for his own sake, he had spent most of his life living on the fringes on polite society, and other than Mycroft, who was not buffeted by such winds, he had no kith or kin, but he hesitated because any scandal would reflect on Watson, and he would rather anything than that.

Society did not merely judge the man for his acts but also those who kept his company. Watson was no holy fool, he was a doctor and had been a soldier, and would probably tell Holmes to do as he felt best and hang the consequences, but that was because Watson was a good friend, which was exactly why Holmes wouldn't.

A man who shares his flat with another, if that other was found to be a sodomite would find himself tarred with the same brush, and in the present world, shunned.

The world of the common man and his opinions was an illogical place, where no man who loves men could ever be friends with another man.  



End file.
